Annual 2049 Essay - How TF Are We Not Learning?
I didn't go to any conferences this year. Except for Breakpoint, I went to private conferences. Here is my summary of the conference:
1. Winter is coming for first-tier institutions
All the first-tier institutions I talked to basically gave negative feedback, and some even said that "first-tier is dead". Basically, every company has a large number of SAFTs without TGE or TGE but not unlocked (the price is already very bad). Several OTC institutions mentioned that many deals could not find buyers.
As for the new fund raising that has to be done in each cycle, it has also been greatly reduced. Of the 100 million announced to the public, only 1/10 may actually be received, and the rest is committed. In the last round, 500 million or 1 billion was easily raised. In this case, the only way is to increase the investment dose for each project, which means that the valuation has to be pushed up, creating one "dead" project after another. However, there are no more SBFs in this round. So we can only invite a few "head funds" to die.
In addition, basically every first-tier institution has mentioned that they want to enter the incubation track. However, to be frank, the staffing and GP capabilities of these institutions have nothing to do with incubation, and they don’t even have the experience of taking a project from scratch to closing - so how should incubation be done?
2. Everyone pretends to care about the "real scene"
Every agency that caught me on the scene would ask me what track I was looking at recently (although everyone was actually pretending to look at deals). Then I asked this question back, and many of them answered: projects with real income, real users, and real scenarios, and then they would talk about RWA, AI, Depin, etc., as if these words really refer to something. Everyone knows it tacitly - there is really nothing that can be used as a thesis to prove that they are "researching"
In fact, everyone knows that the idea of finding real Web2 scenarios to fill the "Web3" narrative vacuum was falsified as early as the 22nd round. Today, looking at the last round of listings on Binance, the worst performing projects are those with "scenario" applications. It's not that Crypto doesn't need this kind of innovation, but they have nothing to do with the real "positive externality" of the currency circle - asset liquidity.
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree
3. New users are entering the market in large numbers using methods that practitioners cannot understand
Many organizations and project owners at the event used this opening line: "There are no new users or new funds coming in this round. In order to get them in, we should do this and that."
On the other hand, @IGGYAZALEA dropped the most outrageous but awesome party in the history of Crypto, which was out of the ordinary but truly Crypto-native and attracted attention from outside the circle (rather than Zuckerberg's sister We Gonna Make It's top signal);
Everyone knows that this @Solana Breakpoint is the best public chain ecological conference in recent years, and it can be called the Burning Man Festival in the cryptocurrency circle. But why are BPs so awesome?
I think what everyone didn’t notice is that the KOLs @SolJakey @solanasteve_ @chooserich who continue to produce video content for Breakpoint, Solana, and @redactedcoin, the one who “smuggled 20,000 condoms” @doginhood_io, and Professor Crypto who won the “Best KOL Award”. They are covering everything that is happening in the cryptocurrency world in a way that has never appeared before.
This is something that has never happened before and belongs to the Gen Alpha generation of Tiktok. Many Solana project owners or Cabals are less than 20 years old - and these are things that old leeks practitioners cannot understand.
Newcomers are entering the market in an unprecedented way and speed, and many people simply turn a blind eye. Soon, the narrative logic, operation mode, and communication logic of the entire cryptocurrency project will undergo fundamental changes.
Summarize
The biggest lesson of human history is that people will not learn any lessons from history. No offense, but judging from the conclusions of many people after the 2049 meeting, this is still applicable in the cryptocurrency world.
Every time we encounter difficulties in the industry, we will resort to empty talk of "real benefits, real users, real scenarios" and "letting traditional funds enter the market" as a conditional reflex. However, the lesson of history is that these old and young people from the industrial age are just tourists in the Crypto world. At most, they come in to do carry trade and will not change anything. If we do not start from the original nature of the currency circle, the so-called "real scenarios" are just a curious way of using currency to do scenarios that fiat currency has done decades ago.
The biggest constraint in the cryptocurrency industry is not the product, but the people. People’s way of thinking and learning ability are limited and fixed. Therefore, the way the audience perceives and understands Crypto in a certain period of time determines how they will act as the exit liquidity of the cryptocurrency industry, and is also the only factor that determines what the cryptocurrency industry needs to become.
To put it simply, the old generation is too stupid to use new things. They have to wait until they die before the new generation takes over.
You can't find the new world by following the old map (unless you are really dumb like Columbus)
What has gone so wrong that many of our industry’s best people are now unable to learn from history and realize that the future is already here?
